Give Yourself – and the Homeless – a Present

I've been involved in a lot of bands over the years and nearly always contributed songs to their set lists and albums.

But the "Christmas single" I came up with a few years back was never really taken seriously by anyone I played or wrote with... until Christmas Aguilera came along.

The Christmas Aguilera boys and girls only come together at this time of the year – to produce a seasonal record and raise money for charity.

This year, they've put out a whole album of their greatest hits and the last track on there is my previously shunned but now gloriously embraced "I Wanna Give You A Present".

The album also includes this year's brilliant single, "Why Can't I Go To Sleep?", composed by Christmas Aguilera mastermind Gary Cansell.

You can buy the album here, enjoy some truly original Yuletide music, and know that the proceeds will go to Shelter to help the homeless.

https://music.apple.com/gb/album/jolly-santa-social-club/1542550322

https://christmasaguilera.bandcamp.com/album/jolly-santa-social-club

When Rosie Met Gary

So many journalists seem to be musicians too. While attending yet another farewell party in Wapping last night, I reconnected with Rosie Brown, an ex-Sunday Times journalist but, more importantly, a great and original singer-songwriter with three albums to her credit, whom I've seen playing at Ronnie Scott's to a packed house (www.rosiebrown.com).

I was able to introduce Rosie to Sunday Times journalist Gary Cansell, also a great songwriter and leader of the amazing London band Hero & Leander (www.myspace.com/heroandleanderuk), now in the process of being signed to a German label to produce a series of albums.

Perhaps realising that in the greyness of the newspaper office, the colours of music are always waiting to be expressed, News International recently introduced a "music at work" scheme so that journalists could have lunchtime music lessons. But with the latest redundancies, some of these classes are much depleted. So the cutbacks have not been good for journalism — or for music.